Tuesday, May 19, 2009

I'm pleased... it really looks good! And my first squares came out well, also:

A major bummer, though... on one of the embroidery squares (not shown) I cut in the wrong place and had to piece on an additional piece of fabric. I guess it's not too noticeable, so I'm not redoing the embroidery. I think it'll be a while before I get back to sewing on this because I'm going camping this weekend. :D Ah, vacation, I have been missing you.

Monday, May 18, 2009

The first thing I did was to calculate the quilt size that I wanted. I decided to make it a twin, but on the large side so that it would work on a double bed as well. I laid the entire quilt out electronically using MS Paint... it's not the most versatile graphics program, but it was quite adequate for the purpose. I really got waaay into this electronic layout. I went as far as to copy fabric swatches from the site where I purchased the fabric and use them as my building blocks. I tried random distributions and arranged distributions, and various border sizes and compositions:

In the end, I decided to go with the design shown above, center. I liked the random layout, but was afraid it would overwhelm the embroidery squares. For the border, I knew that it needed to be fairly large so that I would not have to make the center larger (and do more embroidery!) I liked the quilted portion of the border, and arranged the rest to be simple, but somewhat broken up so that it didn't attract the eye too fiercely.

From here I calculated the fabric requirements. It took quite some time, and I'm glad that I saved the information, because I have referred back to it several times. I double and triple checked my numbers, (and then quadruple checked because the first 3 times I got a different answer each time... finally figured out that I was treating the borders incorrectly). Even when I got it all straightened out, I ordered extra of everything because the fabric was selling out. I will be glad to have some extra when I am done... it's such cute stuff!

Monday, May 11, 2009

My niece's mother and I decided that the quilt should be pink and green... green to tie it in with her current bedroom decorations and pink, which is her favorite color. I did all of my color selecting by computer, from fabrics.com. They have a handy tool that lets you collect your color swatches digitally and then move them around. I didn't like the fact that adding or removing a swatch messed up your organization, though.

There were such beautiful fabrics! Someday, I will definitely have to build a quilt around these:

For my niece, though, I initially selected these, though I wasn't very excited about the color scheme:

Before I got further in the selection process, though, I saw this:

Not only was it easier on me (it's offered in a jelly roll from Moda) being pre-cut, but I liked it much better than the pinks and greens. My sister thought that my niece would love the cheerful colors and thought it would look great in the room. Whew! I learned from my mother's example that it is much easier to make a quilt that you like.

Thursday, May 7, 2009

Today is my first finish for the second round of Spring to Finish. I completed this embroidery for my niece's quilt. I like to call it "The Pornographic Ken-Doll Raccoon and His Victim."

Backing up a bit, after I had picked out embroidery patterns, I looked at quilt layouts to see what I liked. I didn't have to look very far here, because the one I ultimately picked was one of the first that I saw. I liked the way the embroidery squares were framed by the patchwork squares, and I appreciated the simplicity of the patchwork portions.

I decided not to do it in redwork, though, since I thought my embroidery designs would look better in color.

Tuesday, May 5, 2009

Yes yes it is. Because I won't have one until I start one. I am doing the Spring to Finish and I started to blog to record my progress. I have been toying with the idea of starting a blog and this is great motivation to start.

First thing we are going to be hearing a lot about my quilt. When my older sister got pregnant, I decided to make a quilt for my first niece. I figured it would be especially meaningful for her later if I got each of my (4) sisters to embroider a block for the quilt and then I would piece them together.

I looked around for embroidery sets that I could use. I was thinking that a day-of-the-week transfer set would be great for a quilt because the blocks would coordinate and I could just take off the words. I looked through my grandma's stash of transfer patterns and checked at Joann's, but I didn't really find anything that inspired me.

It wasn't until three years and two additional nieces later that I finally took the first real step toward this quilt by searching the internet for embroidery patterns. I hit a goldmine when I found a vintage pattern group on Flickr I found these cute kittens, along with a ton of various animals.

I got really excited and downloaded hundreds of patterns. My next task was to pare it down to a reasonable number of patterns. I tried first to do select matching pattern styles, but eventually decided to go for a bold mix because I just couldn't give up some of them. My sisters each gave their input, picking the ones that they wanted to embroider. Finally, I had them all picked.